Silent treatment: The Artist’ an unlikely awards contender

Al Alexander

Sunday

Dec 18, 2011 at 12:01 AMDec 18, 2011 at 3:12 PM

When French director Michel Hazanavicius yelled “quiet on the set” during filming of his Oscar-contending flick, “The Artist,” his cast and crew dutifully took his command literally. No peeps, pops or whispers, for this was truly a silent movie. Remember those? If you’re under the age of 90, probably not, but, yes, Virginia, there was a time when the pictures did not talk.

When French director Michel Hazanavicius yelled “quiet on the set” during filming of his Oscar-contending flick, “The Artist,” his cast and crew dutifully took his command literally. No peeps, pops or whispers, for this was truly a silent movie. Remember those? If you’re under the age of 90, probably not, but, yes, Virginia, there was a time when the pictures did not talk.

There was also a time when they weren’t all made in color or shot at a ratio wide enough to fill a vista, as Hazanavicius is quick to remind during a visit to Boston last month to promote “The Artist,” opening Friday.

Unless you’ve just been pulled from a collapsed Chilean coal mine, you’ve undoubtedly heard all about his defiant efface to the accoutrements of modern filmmaking. Critics and industry folks love it, as evidenced by all the laurels bestowed upon it since its premier this past spring at the Cannes Film Festival. The question now is whether or not audiences will feel the same, especially those raised on IMAX, 3-D and digital imaging.

After all, “The Artist” is a throwback to an era when most of our great-grandparents were tooling around in flapper dresses and Model Ts (and, no, “T” doesn’t stand for T-shirt). But give it a chance and Hazanavicius is convinced you’ll be charmed by the chance to see actors like “Babe’s” James Cromwell and “Roseanne’s” John Goodman acting without words.

What the movie thrives on, though, are the sure-to-be Oscar-nominated lead performances by Jean Dujardin and Berenice Bejo (Hazanavicius’ wife) as actors from opposite ends of the success spectrum falling in love in 1930s Hollywood.

“When I started to write the script I was excited, but you go from that kind of emotion to the opposite,” Hazanavicius said. “Because when you write, you hope that it’s going to be great, but you have doubts. You think no one will be interested by a black and white, silent, period movie.” Frankly, nobody was. Or, at least no one was originally.

“The idea for “The Artist” started like 10 years ago,” said Hazanavicius, best known here for his “OSS 117” spy spoofs starring Dujardin. “It was originally not a real idea. It was a desire. I was attracted by the format. But nobody wanted to do it. Finally, I met the producer Thomas Langmann. He was very courageous, very supportive with me in getting ‘The Artist’ made.” While preparing to write the script, Hazanavicius said he watched and dissected dozens of movies from the Silent Era. And what he discovered most was that although the stories were often simple, the filmmaking was very complex. And so it is with “The Artist.” The scenario about a phased-out silent film star falling in love with a beautiful young actress rising to the heights at the advent of “talkies,” is as modest as they come. But the technical achievements of “The Artist” are as impressive as they were difficult to achieve.

“The complexities were in how to make things simple for the audience,” Hazanavicius said. “The best compliment I had was made by John Goodman, who said this movie was like a watch; it’s very simple on the face, but inside it’s really, really complicated. And in a way, I think he is right, because when you have dialogue it’s easy to tell a story. I don’t mean that dialogues are simple, but you have that weapon, you have that tool that can help, because when you want to say something, you just say it. In a silent movie, if you want to say something, you have to show it. You have to show the right image to attract the right response from the audience.” Hazanavicius said it is even harder to find actors able to communicate feelings and moods with nothing but their faces.

“Not every actor can do this. You must work with expressive actors,” Hazanavicius said. “The two main actors, Jean and Berenice, I wrote the script with them in mind. So in a way, it was easy for me, and even for them, I guess, because it was done specifically for them. Also, I thought the characters in the movie were very much a representation of Jean and Berenice.

“Berenice is very much like her character, Peppy, she is a funny person. Everybody loves her. So when she smiles, I knew that it fits the character. As for the casting of the Americans, I tried to work with good actors with special faces. The faces were important because they had to get the character very quickly. When you see someone like James Cromwell, he can play a villain or a bad person and you will get it right away. But when he plays a nice old man like the one he plays in ‘The Artist,’ as soon as he enters the frame, you understand who he is. There are some great, great actors I think who would be less easy to work with. For example, I won’t speak about living actors, but someone like Steve McQueen who was a great actor but he always played it stone-faced, a poker face. That would never work in this movie.” Hazanavicius is equally passionate about the film’s unique look, which squeezes black-and-white images into a narrow 1-to-1.53 ratio, or roughly the shape of an analogue TV set.

“Black and white was absolutely adept for this story, for this movie, so there was no question in my opinion to make it in black and white,” Hazanavicius said. “But we shot in color because it was the best way to obtain the kind of look we were going for with a lot of grays.

“Black and white also provides a greater opportunity to play with the black, the white, with the gray, with the shadows, with the lights. Everything is more readable. Also, it is wonderful for the actors because it erases all the small imperfections on the skin and everything. It gives them a special aura. And the ratio 1-1.53 is wonderful for them because when you do a close-up they occupy all the space of the frame. And that means they own the space. When you do it wide, there are a lot of useless parts in the image. So the narrow ratio gives them a special presence.” The film’s look and its performances would be nothing, however, without Ludovic Bource’s evocative score. But Hazanavicius takes slight offense when I suggest that the music makes the movie.

“I would not say it is the most essential because it doesn’t tell the story,” Hazanavicius said. “And to me, it’s about telling the story. If you listen to music, just the recording, you have no clue of what is the story. But it’s like the left hand of the script. I mean, you can’t separate them. We worked very closely with Ludovic and the music is really an emotional companion to the story. It helps a lot in communicating to the audience if you’re in a comedy sequence or a dramatic one.” Even if “The Artist” goes on to win the Best Picture Oscar, and Hazanavicius Best Director, as many predict, he says nothing will top the elation he experienced when he premiered his baby at Cannes.

“I was not so self-confident,” said Hazanavicius, who attended the premier with Bejo and their two children. “I was hoping that they will love it, but I was not sure. I knew that I could be proud of the movie before Cannes. So in a way, I was clear with myself. I was not afraid; but I was not sure. Then, when the audience applauded for 15 minutes or so, it was so incredible. I was very happy for me, the actors, the producers, all the people who worked so hard. I was proud of it.”

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